Turn any Shoes into Smart Shoes with Lechal GPS Insoles

Turn any Shoes into Smart Shoes with Lechal GPS Insoles

Smart shoes are getting some traction in the market and this has lead most of us to go and hunt for one. But unlike smartwatch and trackers, one cannot change the bands and has to wear the same shoes every time. Well, Lechal smart insoles are here to solve this problem by developing an insole that will make any shoes smart. This means that you can swap the insoles from one shoe to another without worrying about buying multiple smart shoes and at the outset, this seems like a wise and economic option. Wondering what Lechal means, well it means “take me along” in Hindi.

The Lechal insoles make use of GPS, haptic feedback along with an array of other sensors in order to determine your fitness level and also show the places you have been to. That’s not all, by pairing the soles with the app one can also get signals on where to go, this means that you no more need to pull out your phone to access the GPS. This is how the guidance works, in case you are supposed to take a left turn the insole sends specific vibrations to your feet. The vibrations are unique for each type of signals including turns and rerouting.


Moreover, the app also lets you set milestones or checkpoints and after crossing each one of them the soles will vibrate. This feature will go a long way in motivating the users to achieve fitness goals. Also, you can download offline maps and use the entire functionality of the GPS features without having to rely on connectivity. The companion app also lets you mark certain places of interest while you are taking your morning walk or maybe you can share the coordinates with your friends. In a nutshell, the Lechal Insoles records your exact path of travel and will also ensure you can do many things en route. One can charge the inserts by plugging in a USB cable.



Beyond the tracking functionality the soles also offer step count, calories burnt, and a notification for every milestone you set. The maker of Lechal insoles touts the step counter feature as very accurate and if it says 10,000 steps it means 10,000 steps. The Lechal Smart Insoles are already up on the Amazon Launchpad and can be purchased at $180 (Rs 6,999) a pair. The companion app is available for both iOS and Android.

Lechal insoles use GPS, haptic feedback to make any pair of shoes smart

Lechal insoles use GPS, haptic feedback to make any pair of shoes smart





Smart shoes are a small market right now. As a result, you may be hard-pressed to find a pair that fits your style. And wearing different shoes to match an outfit means you lose the smart features. The Lechal smart insoles solve that problem by allowing you to transfer the brains from shoe to shoe. Now you can stay connected no matter the attire.

Lechal insoles use haptic feedback and GPS technology to keep you going in the right direction, show you where you’ve been, track your fitness levels, and more. By connecting with the Lechal app on your phone, your feet can tell you where to go as the app sends specific vibrations to your foot. This means less time staring at your phone, and more time focused on the world around you.

More: Pair Lechal with these smart shoes for the ultimate piece of tech

For instance, as you approach an upcoming turn, a slight vibration in your left or right foot will tell you all you need to know. There are unique vibration patterns for different kinds of turns and even for rerouting. With the app, you can also set specific waypoints along the route. As you reach each destination, the insoles will notify you. They can also be used offline to download maps beforehand. This is extremely helpful when going on a hike or traveling abroad.

Lechal insoles can also be used in tandem with the app to record data. See something of interest along the way? You can tag these locations for later use or send a location directly to a friend for a meetup. Or maybe you found a new trail or faster walk through the city. You can record the exact path for future excursions.

Another great use for the insole is tracking fitness. Set a goal using the Lechal app for any distance, step count, or calories to burn. The insoles will vibrate once you’ve reached your goal. As a step counter, you can’t get much more accurate than a sensor under your foot. When it says 10,000 steps, it means 10,000 steps.

You can purchase the Lechal Smart Insoles from the Amazon Launchpad program. Each pair of insoles are unisex and can be purchased for $180. The associated app can be downloaded for any iOS or Android device.

What Amazon Launchpad says about Indian innovators

 As the social stigma associated with risk-taking recedes, product start-ups are getting quirkier than ever before

Insoles that double up as fitness trackers (bottom left) is among the line-up for Amazon Launchpad.

 A shiny white sphere speaker floating magically above its magnetic base like a spacecraft hovering above earth. Insoles that double up as fitness trackers. An automatic dosa maker. The line-up for Amazon Launchpad, a curated collection of products from start-ups now available on the Amazon India website, provides a quick snapshot of innovators. India head Amit Agarwal says the timing seemed right because we’re finally more encouraging of risk-taking; the social stigma associated with it is slowly receding. Product start-ups are quirkier than ever before.

If you’re a technology writer you may not think these products are edgy enough to include in your year-end gifting guide (can anything compete with the latest offering from Bose?). If you’re me, it’s a great place to see what tech-savvy India is conjuring up for city slickers. If you don’t care about gizmos and if you’re not from south India, there’s always the “ready-to-use filter coffee decoction”, also listed as a unique product from a start-up. If you’re a cynic (you prefer realist, I know), you believe that the idea and execution of most Indian tech products continues to rely heavily on China. 

You might be occasionally surprised.

Wearable tech pioneer Ducere Technologies, which produces Lechal insoles and buckles that can turn your shoes into smart shoes, first experimented with producing in China. Now their assembly line is based in Hyderabad. “India is a fantastic place for up to a million units a year,” says co-founder Krispian Lawrence. “You control your entire item, nobody else knows what the entire product is and you control quality.”

If you’re an entrepreneur and angel investor like Sharad Sharma, you will promptly point out that the real innovation is happening not in your India (of 50 million families with an household income of more than $7,400, or about Rs5 lakh) but in another India (of 100 million families whose annual income lies somewhere from $3,300-3,400 and one that is on the cusp of entering the formal economy). “This is where the real action is. Launchpad will be important three years from now when it can penetrate this other India,” he says. If you dream the digital dream as Sharma does, connectivity equals creditworthiness equals overnight access to a virgin market. Here, innovators focus on areas such as health and education (an inexpensive RO water filter, for example), because that’s what people want to improve first when they have money to invest.

If you’re an innovator creating for urban India, you’re just grateful that someone’s finally assisting you to get the word out about your amazing-but-unheard-of product to a large number of people. Since Amazon has tied up with key groups in the start-up ecosystem, it’s easy enough to qualify if your product is of a certain standard (and for a monthly fee of Rs5,000). You must also fulfil other criteria, such as proving to Amazon that you can meet deadlines.

It’s not easy to meet deadlines in modern India, especially when your shipment dates happen to coincide with the early days of demonetisation and the death of J. Jayalalithaa, the chief minister of the state where you assemble and test your product. Somnath Meher, co-founder of Witworks, the start-up that created the smartwatch Blink (with its own operating system Marvin), recalls the delay when these events occurred in tandem.

He says that though lots of students tinker and make things, there are no role models for product start-ups that have managed to scale operations successfully. “We’re still very service and software driven. Even when we were raising funds, we were told: ‘You seem sensible enough, why don’t you solve this last mile problem for delivery? Why do you want to make products?’.”

Some entrepreneurs get past this block by telling a story that goes beyond the product. Vishal Gondal, founder and chief executive officer of GOQii (pronounced Go-Key), knew that it would be difficult to convince connected Indians to buy his Made in China fitness band over any other well known brand. So he offered buyers a personal trainer subscription plan with the device. “We built a health ecosystem and opted for the service model over the hardware sale model,” he says.

Amazon helped Gondal spread the news much before Launchpad, and the newer start-ups listed are likely to take inspiration from GOQii. Sharma points out that other recent changes in the start-to-finish cycle have also helped product start-ups. It’s easier to raise funds now thanks to the rising popularity of crowdsourcing websites such as Kickstarter. The growth of the Maker movement across India and the setting up of fully-loaded tech shops where innovators can prototype their products and interact with likeminded folks has had an impact too.

Aditya Agrawal, co-founder of ICE, a company that makes the quirky Ice Orb Floating Bluetooth Speaker, says they got the idea from friends who were working with levitation technology. “We began wondering how we could use this technology differently in making tech products,” he says. The company launched its product in the US first and it was a favourite online Christmas gift idea last year. “This is freakin’ awesome,” said technology YouTuber Lamarr Wilson in his video review.

A bigger, badder version of this speaker is now available in the US, where popular Launchpad products include self-cleaning fish tanks, a contraption that allows you to pour a glass of wine without pulling out the cork (intrigued?), a toilet bowl with motion sensors that lights up when you want to go in the middle of the night and a smart pet feeder that takes charge when you’re not at home. That’s probably the future of big city innovation everywhere. Meanwhile, I’m just happy that there are entrepreneurs who want to create for the connected, cynical India that has access to the best toys. It can only be good for our spirit of innovation.

LECHAL teams up with Amazon Launchpad for retail launch in India

Lechal unisex insoles, one of its kind wearable technology product that is GPS navigated, is now available on Amazon Launchpad at Rs 6,999.

Lechal, the world’s first haptic-based interactive footwear, announced its partnership with Amazon Launchpad, a platform for startups to launch, market, and distribute their products to hundreds of millions of customers across the globe.

Lechal unisex insoles, one of its kind wearable technology product that is GPS navigated, is now available on Amazon Launchpad at Rs 6,999. Taking you to the future of footwear, Lechal reminds you your direction, keeps a record for your route and checks your fitness levels. The stylish smart insoles can slip into footwear like any other. By pairing the insoles with the Lechal app to Here Maps via Bluetooth, the user can set a destination and receive directions via haptic vibrations on his/her feet making any journey truly hands-free. The Lechal app is available on both android & IOS.

Speaking on the partnership with Amazon, Krispian Lawrence, founder and CEO Ducere Technologies said “It gives us immense pleasure to be a part of the Amazon Launchpad program. Lechal has been innovatively designed to offer something distinctive and redefine the way we navigate our world. We anticipate that this platform will help bring the product to a wider audience.”

Amazon Launchpad is a platform where customers can discover unique innovations from the world’s brightest startups. Amazon  has worked with leading venture capital firms, startup accelerators and crowd-funding platforms to help more than 500 startups to launch over 1500 cutting-edge products in the US, UK, Germany, France, China and Mexico.

“We are very excited to provide the Amazon Launchpad platform to Ducere Technologies to launch Lechal in India. Amazon Launchpad is a specially tailored program that helps start-ups like Ducere Technologies to showcase their unique and exciting products to millions of Amazon customers in India as well as globally. With Amazon Launchpad, we hope to augment the innovation culture among the Indian youth, support the Indian government’s Start-up India initiative and help build the India story,” says Jason Feldman, Director Global Innovations, Amazon.

 

GPS Bluetooth Enabled Navigation And Fitness Activity Tracker

GPS Navigation And More For Your Feet.

Lechal is a fashion and lifestyle brand that has been recognized globally for innovation, winning several awards and recognition, including Frost & Sullivan India's New Product Innovation Leadership Award and the second place at Rec@nnect Challenge, a partnership between CRDF Global and the United States Department of State in 2014. This year, Ducere has been selected as a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner and Krispian Lawrence was awarded Business World’s Young Entrepreneur Award. 

Since the genesis of Lechal was to harness haptics to help the visually-challenged, it has an accessible, inclusive design and features that also allow it to be used by the visually-impaired. 

World At your Feet
 Simply snap the Lechal pods into your smart footwear, set your destination in the app and you're good to go. No maps, no hands, no audio, no screen notifications, no distractions - just you and your super smart shoes!

Offline Navigation
It even works offline! Which means you can wander off with no data connectivity or get off a plane in a new country and Lechal will work, always in all ways.

 Fitness Activity Tracking 
Lechal counts steps and calories and measures the distance travelled. It logs your activity, so that you can keep track of your fitness.

Fitness-based Navigation
Even when you're using Lechal to navigate, fitness is not far behind as you can pick your route based on the metrics you can achieve.

Appsolutely Simple 
Lechal's app is its nerve centre from which you conanect to the pods, set your destination, create custom workouts and much more. It also reflects our core design principles of minimalism and user-centricity, and of course, fun! 
 
Power Efficient
Lasts 15 days on a single charge

Click here to buy Lechal Smart Navigation and Fitness Tracking Insoles and Buckles from store.lechal.com. 

Also availble in Amazon.com

Wearable Technology with Haptic Feedback

Wearable technology is a class of innovation gadgets that can be worn by a buyer and regularly incorporate following data identified with wellbeing and wellness. Other wearable tech contraptions incorporate gadgets that have little movement sensors to bring photographs and adjust with your cell phones.

 

The development of wearable innovation in the shopper hardware part is chiefly ascribed to expanding requests for wearable scanners and figuring gadgets in distribution center, logistics, and alternate operations where effectiveness is unavoidable. Consumer wearable gadgets incorporate a large group of items that are utilized as a part of shifted applications, for example, wellness and games, excitement and sight and sound, multi-capacity, and pieces of clothing and form. Wearable electronic gadgets find convincing applications in wellness and games. From keen wristwatches that record heart rates to smart groups that track physical exercises; wearabletechnology as wellness observing gadgets pull in expanding consideration from wellbeing cognizant purchasers. 

While fitness bands, smart watches and other different wearables are as of now settled in the business sector, a large portion of them have under-conveyed on desires.

With the focus in wearable technology heavily centered on devices that go on users' wrists and heads, Indian company has launched the Lechal smartshoe, which is the world's first interactive haptic feedback footwear. Lechal insoles works on the 'interactive haptic feedback' aspect, the way of vibrations in either feet alert users to a range of things including directions and nearby acquaintances. Lechal insoles pods sync up “with a smartphone that uses Google Maps and vibrate to tell users when and where to turn to reach their destination.” This is an exciting breakthrough in wearable technology.